Top 6 Essential Graphic Design Software for Beginners

A visually appealing site is a dream of both a website owner as well as a user. The real task is of the graphic and web designers to make the dream turn into reality.

Gone are the days when people only indulged in reading content online. Nowadays, more than the words, the site has to look interesting too. With eye-catching visuals and gripping content, the user gets convinced to stay on the website and use it, especially in the case of e-Commerce sites. The graphics play a major role in creating the outlook of your website. As a graphic designer, this is your territory. In order to create a website with such intriguing visuals, you will require a graphic design software that will help you improvise the images, models, and text that is to be shown on the website. If you’re a newbie in the field of graphic designing, check out this 6 Essential software for graphic designers (both paid and free) that will render a professional look to your website graphics

The road which led to photo editing was never so interesting. The automatic options infuse life to your images making your work ‘the talk of the town’ even if you are a newbie. With Photoshop you can easily combine multiple images and even remove unwanted objects from the image. It offers basic features like perspective correction, channel mixing, and clone stamp tool. Photoshop runs on both Windows and Mac. Photoshop is also considered as one of the best graphic design software for beginners as it comes with simplified options like:

Basic: Cropping, straightening, rotating and flipping.

Auto-Fix: One touch adjustment.

Blemish Removal: Ability to remove any spot or dirt from the image.

Colour: Slide controls to enhance the colors of the image.

One-Touch filter: 20 eye-catching effects to choose from.

Image Rendering: Panoramic image option.

Borders: Add your personal touch.

RAW photo support: RAW format support.

Sharing: via sites like Facebook, Revel, Twitter, Tumblr, and more.

Pros

Video editing is smooth.

The crop tool is quite effective.

Performance is highly improved.

Cons

GIMP or GNU Image Manipulation Program is the perfect alternative to Adobe Photoshop. The professional tools make it ideal for not just graphic designers but photographers as well. The photo manipulation feature is highly enhanced. The flexibility of the tool allows you to create crystal-clear graphics. Once you begin using GIMP, it will definitely achieve the pedestal of being your main desktop publishing tool. The interface is totally customizable and the full-screen mode allows you to view and edit at the same time. Yes, not all the extensive features are available. Still, there are many features that will provide you a great experience. GIMP runs on GNU/Linux, OS X, Windows and other OS. Being a cross-compatible graphic design software, it has a strong support community. This is, hands down, one of the prime choices when selecting graphic design software for beginners.

Pros

The UI is bright and modern.

Very easy to use.

Comes with single windows usage.

Cons

If you want to use vector art to create logos, sketches, typography, icons or even complex illustrations for videos or mobile then Illustrator is the tool for you. You can create artwork with seamless alignment by drawing pixel-perfect shapes. With Illustrator designing could never be faster. Illustrator comes with its own plugins that help in making a blank web page into a brilliant looking web page. Some plugins are made for older versions of Ai and have a zest of new features for new versions like Creative Cloud, making it an ideal graphic design software. Being part of Creative Cloud, you get to use the app on both your desktop and Mac.

Pros

Touch-type tool is awesome.

The Free Transform tool is very simple to use.

Availability for Windows and Mac.

Cons

Inkscape, an alternative to Ai, is a professional tool ideal for vector art lovers and graphic designers who use SVG file format. The tool is perfect for Windows, Linux, OS, and Mac as well. It doesn’t matter whether you are a professional or just a person who wants to create vector images for a personal blog. In terms of sketching, coloring or making illustrations Inkscape is very easy to use. With the Ghostscript extension .eps files are easily readable. It also comes with awesome features like:

Ability to directly edit the source code.

Keys to move screen pixels.

Edit clones on the canvas.

Edit gradients.

Fill paint-bucket with one click.

Pros

Absolutely free.

Endless Filters.

New effect tools as a bonus.

Cons

Are you an aspiring web designer and looking for a graphics editor that gives you the ability to create infinite designs without any restrictions while honing your skills at the same time? If so, you might want to check out CorelDraw, a vector graphics editor, that is hands down one of the most popular Industry Standard editors presently. CorelDraw has some cool productive functions and such an ease of use that no other vector editor can match up to.

The tools give you full control so you can get fast and dynamic results. With CorelDraw version X5 and above, you get an inbuilt organizer (Corel CONNECT) also.

With tools like Twirl, Smear, Repel and Attract – vector object editing was never so easy. The Alignment guide enables you to position objects as per your requirement. CorelDraw works smoothly with large files in Corel Photo-Paint, making it a must-have in the graphic design software list. It also supports apps like Barcode wizard, Duplexing wizard, Bitstream Font Navigator, etc.

Pros

The interface customization is ideal.

The design is very fresh.

The training videos are very helpful.

Choose from perpetual license or subscription.

The right-click gives awesome vectorization.

Shaping docker gives maximum usage.

Cons

Backed by the Adobe brand, InDesign is the business leader for creating clean layouts for desktop and mobile devices alike. Adobe InDesign is ideal for layout design usage like online magazines. Whether you want to create layouts for printed books, brochures or digital magazines Adobe InDesign is the tool you need. The flexibility is great as it allows you to easily drag-drop isolated layers and you can resize images with ease. Being part of Creative Cloud you get easy access to the desktop app for PC and Mac. You also get the comparison app Comp CC available for tablets and Smartphone devices including 29 desktop apps and 10 mobile apps.

You can also use Behance and Typekit services that enable you to connect your workflow between photography, videos, designing and web or app development. With Adobe Creative Sync you can share or sync all your work between your desktop and mobile apps so you can work efficiently. Once you join as a member you will get the latest updates and new features with installation decision being solely yours.

Pros

The combining of text and graphics becomes easy.

The learning curve is very low, ideal for newbies.

The features that come with InDesign are unbelievable.

Cons

Limited tools for creating graphics.

The graphics tools are not as powerful.

The adjustment of photos is limited as this is not a photo-editing software.

Bonus Tools

This graphic design software offers a powerful tool for not just photo designing an editing but, one can also use it for producing creative logos, animations, posters and more. Just because of its oodles of illustrative features, it has been ranked as the top graphic design software by Toptenreviews. By providing a rating of 9.2 out of 10, the site has given it a marker of being the best in its league.

It has a low learning curve making it approachable by both graphic designers as well as beginners. With this full-featured software, one can even work on intricacies very easily.

One can not just work on 3D animations, add effects to the images but also, create vector illustrations.

This software offers a wide variety of photo editing features and illustration tools. It has extensive features that can assist you in maneuvering color and texture of your images. You even have the possibility of removing any distortion caused by the lens, whatsoever.

The main page offers the basic tips and guidelines so as to understand the functioning of the design software. It has certain masking tools available as well.

The resizing of images can also be done without having to put the quality at stake. This software has a pretty robust support page that addresses user’s issues and provides solutions for the same.

The Paintshop Pro 9 is the latest version released by the Coral team. It is a seemingly impressive photo editing tool that even helps in photo management. It even possesses professional grade tools that can be easily used by both professionals and newbies. It provides video tutorials and other forms of support forums to better the understanding of the software.

It has more than 90 creative filters that can be used to improve the texture and color of your image. It is compatible with image files like RAW, JPG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, PSD and PDF.

Pros

Auto edit option.

A supporter of batch processing, i.e, multiple files can be edited at the same time.

This graphic design software provides an easily navigated and friendly interface. The Corel PhotoImpact X3 provides one with a wide collection of designing and editing tools made easily accessible to you. This can make it appear tricky, hence, it has been divided into eight operative fields. ExpressFix or Full Edit mode serve the purpose of editing the photos. ExpressFix provides the option to adjust exposure, color, skin tone and focus with just a click. Whereas, Full Edit has the editing options like portrait touch-ups, enhancements and effects.

It has an interesting combination of both basic and advanced tools. It holds the compatibility with 32 file formats inclusive of RAW, JPG, TIFF, PNG, GIF, PSD and animated GIFs.

Highly responsive and said to be one of the “fastest image editor available”

Has layers for enriched image composition experience.

Intuitive and a creative user interface.

Conclusion

As a graphic designer, knowing which graphic design software to use is crucial. With so many software available in the market, it is not easy to pick the correct one out. Designing a website and doing away with the burdensome coding can lead you to develop some highly intriguing & professionally looking websites. With TemplateToaster web design software you can design such websites in a matter of minutes. In practically three steps you can bring life to your vision. This website theme builder tends to be compatible with almost all graphic design tools making it flexible to work with. And hence, generate websites that are no less than visual masterpieces.

About Param Chahal

Param Chahal, the mind behind TemplateToaster have more than a decade of industry experience. He wishes to render his pool of wisdom on to the world by contributing with content ideas here on this blog through a team of dedicated editors and writers.